Comments | claudia603: Ramblings and I mean ramblings about reading and writing...:)

claudia603

Ramblings and I mean ramblings about reading and writing...:)

May 13, 2012 07:56

So, I do enjoy reading this blog on occasion called Pub Rants, from the point of view of an agent who has some bestselling author clients. She's very blunt and to the point about trends in publishing and what she/editors want and don't want. Anyway, I spent like 2 hours reading through the blog last night, because I hadn't really looked at it in ( Read more... )

writing, fandom

Comments 17

i_o_r_h_a_e_l May 13 2012, 14:04:22 UTC

I definitely love a vulnerable main character. :D

claudia603 May 13 2012, 14:20:40 UTC

*grin* Indeed! :)

baranduin May 13 2012, 15:06:10 UTC

I've read the first volume of Fifty Shades and I enjoyed it in a "boy is this bad" way. It started life as a Twilight fanfic, and you can tell. I started the second book (it's a trilogy of course) but got bored a little ways through and doubt I'll go back. It's making a mint. I love it that a fanfic writer successfully filed off the serial numbers and made a go of it.

claudia603 May 13 2012, 15:16:34 UTC

Absolutely, more power to her. Wow, I hadn't known that it was Twilight fan fic.

dreamflower02 May 13 2012, 15:21:05 UTC

Except it makes it harder for those of us who just want to enjoy writing fanfic for its own sake to answer well-meaning people who tell us "Oh, but you should try to get your stories published. You could just change the names!"

baranduin May 13 2012, 15:31:30 UTC

Can't say I agree with that at all. Nobody's stopping you from writing. Sadly there are always going to be well-meaning people who don't get it. But it's not any writer's responsibility to say, "oh, I better not, I'll ruin it for the others." Actually I think this is a good thing, it brings fanfic more, I dunno, respectability maybe though that's not right I don't care about that, I guess it brings it more mainstream and into the light. Which I know a lot of fanfic writers don't like, they like their little fantasy of it all being so subversive.

Thread 5

dreamflower02 May 13 2012, 15:19:14 UTC

The truth is these "experts" DON'T know what's going to push people's buttons. Otherwise there would not be so many of these articles about "Wow, I would never have seen THIS coming!"

Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings because his publisher asked for a sequel to The Hobbit. But it was not at all the sort of "sequel" that Stanley Unwin was expecting. Yet he was patient with JRRT, allowing him to take his time through many false starts and in spite of the fact that it was (a) not a children's book and (b)full of things that no one had done before in quite that way while (c) including six of the eight things that the person above says are "bad". And it turned out to be the most influential book of the Twentieth Century ( ... )

claudia603 May 13 2012, 15:39:08 UTC

I agree with this! I think too often agents and editors go with their own personal tastes and literary elitism sometimes instead of what the people REALLY want. Another reason for that is that agents and editors have said (like on this blog in various places) that they feel like they have to REALLY love the fic they are representing. It can't be just, "Welll...this will probably sell a lot." It has to be "I LOVE this fic so much and I want the rest of the world to love it too so I will fight for it and hopefully it will sell alot." So that's a further complication. After all, agents and editors are gatekeepers, but they are also real people with a variety of tastes and kinks themselves. It's really a matter of getting your manuscript to an agent who is on your wavelength. *nods*

cookiefleck May 13 2012, 16:54:42 UTC

I find it really hard to believe that any publisher would turn away books that they thought were guaranteed sellers. And I really doubt that the YA market for dystopian/paranormal/fantasy tales is waning just yet ( ... )

claudia603 May 13 2012, 23:45:57 UTC

I'm not sure the editors/agents are turning away the stories (that may or may not be good) that are guaranteed sellers per se, but more that lots of them are turning down the whole concept before they even read a portion of the manuscript, like when the author queries. Like if I wrote an agent and said, "So I wrote this story about a high school girl who falls in love with a vampire--" I can see the agent just throwing it aside and saying, "NEXT!" and not even giving it a chance because of that. Except for the one exception who gives it a try. Hehehe. Yeah, so it seems the world of book publishing is super duper confusing and subjective and really a lot on the whim of an agent's mood, etc ( ... )

cookiefleck May 15 2012, 00:43:10 UTC

I have trouble explaining what concerns me because I haven't really sorted it out properly in my own mind. And as I said, I read fanfic, and I watch reality TV at times. And I go back and re-read childhood favorites at times, too, to recapture the feeling. I guess I could use the metaphor of a drug.. it's like an easy quick fix opiate -- which IMO is okay as long as one realizes it and, ideally, keeps it under control. There is so much "dumbing down" that goes on these days - TV... books... etc. - and I feel that we need to be aware of it, at least. There's a whole other world out there of ideas and intelligent stimulation that is increasingly being marginalized, IMO. But I know I am not expressing it well. Maybe someday I will pull my thoughts together on this subject.

claudia603 May 16 2012, 10:55:02 UTC

I think I get what you mean. *nods* There is a LOT of dumbing down. You should hear the lunch time conversations I'm forced to endure about Dancing With the Stars just about every day...and these are people with whom I CAN have intelligent conversations

febobe May 13 2012, 20:27:59 UTC

I've had it with the trends and cliches crap to the point that I'm planning to self-pub on my book-length solo work, seriously. And I'm not ruling out discussing that for my fantasy collaboration either, which BTW fits some of the cliches mentioned and YES I KNOW THAT K THANX SHUT UP NOW AGENTY PEOPLE.

I think people should read and write whatever the hell they want. Seriously. Stuff like this drives me so crazy now that I don't usually read it. I don't mind learning from real writers for some of my more "literary" stuff and am thinking of going litmag subs on some of my short things like flashfic and poetry...but that's writers, not agents whining and bitching. Man.

Sorry for ranting. Just...can you tell this is a very sore spot with me? ;)

Hugs,
Febobe :)

claudia603 May 13 2012, 23:47:29 UTC

Hmm...when I see a list of "cliches" like that, it makes me feel all the more rebellious that I want to do it. Rules. I hates them.

I 100 percent agree that people should read and write what they want. We only have so many days/hours on this earth and why waste it doing stuff you don't really love?

**hugs**